A new website project is exciting, but it can lead to frustration when search engines like Google stifle page rank. We frequently work who find themselves struggling to rank on Google with a brand new website address.

Any new business website or change to an existing website address should have no problem getting listed on Google. Getting Google to rank your website highly among your competitors is another story.

Google and other search engines value websites with track records. The primary goal of search engines is to deliver the best results to people doing searches. They want searches to be relevant.

Any new entity is an unknown. There aren’t any of the telltale signs of history or legitimacy: links to your site from other websites, listings in other search engines, etc. Obtaining that kind of relevance isn’t easy and, more importantly, it takes time.

On average, a brand new website address will take 6-8 months before it begins to rank among keywords in your industry. Depending on the quality of your search engine optimization, it could take several more months before that page rank is what you want.

Until that time, your best bet is doing everything you can to support your SEO and promoting your new website the old fashioned way. Tell your clients. Take out online and offline ads. Consider paid SEM campaigns. Anything you can do to boost the visibility of your website as it is gaining the relevance Google wants to increase page rank, the better.

Most of all, maintain perspective. Slowly but surely, your rank will increase. And when it does, you will have built a solid marketing base to compliment your SEO. So many of our clients ignore that critical component of marketing a website. Use the time waiting for your rankings to increase by setting yourself up for success down the line.